Benetiya, Benātia.—Subcaste of Chasa and Sānsia.
Bengali.—Bengali immigrants are usually Brāhmans or Kāyasths.
Bengani.—(Brinjal.) One of the 1444 sections of Oswāl Bania.
Benglāh.—An immigrant from Bengal. Subcaste of Bharbhūnja.
Beora Basia.—(Hawk.) A totemistic sept of Bhatra.
Berāria, Berādia.—(Belonging to Berār.) A subcaste of Bahna, Barai, Barhai, Chamār, Dhangar, Dhīmar, Kasār and Kunbi.
Beria.—A caste of gipsies and vagrants, whose women are prostitutes. Hence sometimes used generally to signify a prostitute. A subcaste of Nat.
Besra.—(Hawk.) A totemistic sept of Bhatra and Rāwat (Ahīr).
Besta.—A Telugu caste of fishermen. They are also called Bhoi and Machchnāik, and correspond to the Dhīmars. They are found only in the Chānda District, where they numbered 700 persons in 1911, and their proper home is Mysore. They are a low caste and rear pigs and eat pork, crocodiles, rats and fowls. They are stout and strong and dark in colour. Like the Dhīmars they also act as palanquin-bearers, and hence has arisen a saying about them, ‘The Besta is a great man when he carries shoes,’ because the head of a gang of palanquin-bearers carries the shoes of the person who sits in it. At their marriages the couple place a mixture of cummin and jaggery on each other’s heads, and then gently press their feet on those of the other seven times. Drums are beaten, and the bridegroom places rings on the toes of the bride and ties the mangal-sūtram or necklace of black beads round her neck. They are seated side by side on a plough-yoke, and the ends of their cloths are tied together. They are then taken outside and shown the Great Bear, the stars of which are considered to be the spirits of the seven principal Hindu Saints, and the pole-star, Arundhāti, who represents the wife of Vasishtha and is the pattern of feminine virtue. On the following two days the couple throw flowers at each other for some time in the morning and evening. Before the marriage the bridegroom’s toe-nails are cut by the barber as an act of purification. This custom, Mr. Thurston[15] states, corresponds among the Sūdras to the shaving of the head among the Brāhmans. The Bestas usually take as their principal deity the nearest large river and call it by the generic term of Ganga. On the fifth day after a death they offer cooked food, water and sesamum to the crows, in whose bodies the souls of the dead are believed to reside. The food and water are given to satisfy the hunger and thirst of the soul, while the sesamum is supposed to give it coolness and quench its heat. On the tenth day the ashes are thrown into a river. The beard of a boy whose father is alive is shaved for the first time before his marriage. Children are tattooed with a mark on the forehead within three months of birth, and this serves as a sect mark. A child is named on the eleventh day after birth, and if it is subsequently found to be continually ailing and sickly, the name is changed under the belief that it exercises an evil influence on the child.
Betala.—(Goblin.) One of the 1444 sections of Oswāl Bania.